Pinterest Perpetuating Procrastination (& other fun alliterations!)

I’m finding that I have a problem. In the spirit of self-diagnosing, I have given it a name: Pinterest Perpetuating Procrastination disorder. It’s a fairly common disease, something that often strikes when the unwilling victim has so much work to do that he or she does none of it and instead goes on Pinterest.

Like just now. If you saw what I was doing, you would have known that I took a ten minute break from writing this just to look for a relevant meme that I could add for visual interest. I couldn’t find one but I did learn how to make DIY tribal print shorts!

Look! I finally found one!

You see the problem. Pinterest has this evil way of making you feel like you’re being productive by looking up something that may be useful in the future (Ex. What to do with those 87 rolls of toilet paper you have lying around. You know you want to make cute little landscapes out of it. In all that extra time you have…) but in fact you’re really just wasting time. Call it a “break from your studies” or a “way to soothe your nerves” or whatever you want but the fact is, once you go on it for a minute you won’t be off for at least another 20.

Dang it! I did it again! All I was doing was looking for a picture on procrastination (that is SERIOUSLY RELEVANT I swear!) and all of a sudden I’m scrolling through thinking “Oh, that’s a good one” or “Mhm, so me!” or “Why didn’t I think of this?” instead of just picking something and coming back here. But now I’m back here and I don’t remember what my point is anymore. So I had to re-read this whole intro and remember what the heck is going on in my brain.

Now that I’ve got at least some sort of idea going again, I’ll hit you with my moral. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend a few hours on the computer to wind down or find inspiration from. We are living in an environment like no other where we have access to any sort of information we could ever imagine at all times so why wouldn’t you want to discover more of what’s out there?

The problem is we can only handle so much. (Except for maybe cat videos. Or videos about baby sloths. I don’t think I could ever get enough of those). But anyway, in general if our brain is getting overload (it can even happen watching those cat videos!), there isn’t a lot of room for the things we actually need to get done. Like, say, homework. Or making dinner. Or being a presentable member of society.

So the next time you think you’re coming down with P-trip (my witty abbreviation for Pinterest Perpetuating Procrastination disorder, obviously) think about how much time and/or brain space you can actually afford to make. If you don’t have much then drop that mouse and see you in the library, friend.